Disclaimer: I own none of the characters within. I do not own the song lyrics.
Author's Notes: *gasp!* What's this? A fairly punctual update of MP?? The gods must be crazy! Or maybe Phantom is just feeling so gosh darn hunky dory that she decided to share the love with her readers. A first for this chapter: a song! Or rather, song lyrics. They help set the mood, I think. For those who don't like it, don't worry, this won't become a trend. It just works here. And I hope I do a good job with Evan, here; I've really written for him before.
And guess what? I changed the summary, because I realized that this story is really about how everyone sees/connects with Pietro. Isn't that interesting?
~
The same deathly silence filled the whole mansion.
It was even worse indoors. When outside, he could at least see the sky. Inside, however, it felt as though the walls were closing in, and he crept through the long hallways with caution born of terror.
Pietro had never really been inside the mansion. Yes, he had infiltrated it in the past, and he had been in the lower levels with the X-Men for a brief period of time. But on the whole, he had never been able to know what it was like inside, how it was decorated, how big it was.
It was bigger than he'd thought it would be.
The decorating, however, was exactly as he'd pictured it. Beautiful paintings on the walls, priceless vases and statues, all sorts of fancy crap like that. It was comforting, really, seeing all these things that he'd imagined.
His wandering carried him into the more fitness-related areas of the place. A gym, a room of various exercise equipment. Wandering among the Stair Masters and the rowing machines, he suddenly froze.
Breath hitched in his throat, eyes widened in inexplicable panic as he stared in fixation at what he'd found.
A treadmill.
Flashes of lightning split his brain, images rocketing around inside his mind, memories so buried in repression and denial that it literally threw him off balance.
Running, running, running, running, running, running, running...
And the man watching him, studying him, writing things down on that damn clipboard to prepare for tomorrow.
He clenched his eyes shut against the tears of fear and childish terror, but when his eyes flew open again they were full of fury and hate.
With an animal scream, he threw himself at the treadmill and began to rip at it in a savage frenzy. The superspeed gave him added strength, and he felt the thick rubber tread tearing under his hands. Handles snapped off and were driven through the control panel. It was thrown on it's side, and he jumped on it until the base of the machine cracked down the middle.
Ripping tearing slashing hitting screaming ripping pounding breaking smashing bastard bastard bastard bastard!!!
He stumbled away from it, flattening himself into a corner and sinking to the floor. Knees drawn up to his chest, he hugged them and buried his face in his arms, weeping hysterically like a child trapped in a nightmare.
Smoke began to drift from the wreckage of the treadmill.
~
Evan fell silent, and Scott felt on the verge of saying something, but quickly hushed himself. Best to let his teammate get through this on his own.
"All right," Evan continued, bolstering his courage. "So they're all in there talking about him and how great he is, how much they miss him, blah blah blah. And then they start going all, 'he knows we're looking for him' and 'why wouldn't we, we're his brothers', and all that stuff."
He broke off again, and this time Scott sensed that he was waiting for an urging to go on.
"Well, yeah," he said awkwardly. "They're pretty close, I guess. What's up?"
"Okay." Evan took a deep breath, steeling himself against some phantom memory that he was now waking from the dead. "The first time I met Pietro, I thought he was a total freak."
//Big surprise.// Scott thought, but this he kept to himself.
"I mean, we lived in a mostly black neighborhood, not dirt poor or nothing, but certainly not the upper crust. And I'd always known the Allens, the couple that lived down the street, were thinking of adopting. And they were white people, so I guess I should have known that they'd adopt a white kid. Still, Pietro was something else.
You've seen the guy, right? Course you have. He's gotta be, like, the whitest guy in history. Some kind of albino, I guess, with that pale skin and that white, white hair. And in this neighborhood, he just stuck out like Scooby-Doo at a pedigreed dog show.
The first day I saw him, he was getting out of their car for the first time. I was in the front yard shooting some hoops, and that's why I was outside. Anyway, I was about nine, and I see this scrawny little white kid getting out of the Allens' car. I knew they must've adopted him, but I couldn't see why anyone would have taken him in.
He was this skinny, sick looking little guy with the saddest eyes I'd ever seen. Even as a kid I could see how ripped up he was, and he kinda reminded me of something you'd buy at a garage sale, some crappy old piece of china that's all faded and cracked and useless. He was holding a little suitcase, and he turned and looked at me. I waved at him, and he just looked so confused by that. He didn't wave back."
"So you guys met when you were nine?" Scott cocked his head. "I always assumed you'd known each other longer."
"Yeah, well, I was nine, and he was... I think he was eleven. Older than me, anyway. And it only feels like we've known each other for longer. See, my mom sent me over to introduce myself, to be polite and all that, and Mrs. Allen answered the door. I asked her if I could talk to her new boy, and she was all, 'oh, goodness, yes!' She was a real happy lady, see, and it's a shame none of that ever rubbed off on Pietro. Anyway.
So I go upstairs to his room, and he's sitting right smack in the middle of this huge bed. He looked right at me again, and he waved."
"No kidding?" Scott chuckled. "I'd say that was cute if you were talking about anyone else."
"Yeah," Evan laughed, a bit wistfully. "Me too. I hardly thought Pietro was cute, though. Kinda pathetic was more how I saw him. He was weak and helpless, or at least, that's what I figured. Looking back, I guess it wasn't so much a physical weakness as it was that he was just all torn up inside. Still is, really, only now he hides it better. He used to get beat up a lot."
"Beat up?"
"Seriously trashed, man. Once a week, at least, I'd see him shuffling home with a bloody nose or a black eye. Sometimes it was worse. One time, these guys kept smashing his head into the sidewalk after they knocked him down. His face was just covered in blood. I used to have nightmares about it, too."
"Man. I'd never have pegged Maximoff as the type who'd let that happen to him."
"He was messed up, man! Something was seriously wrong with him. He just didn't seem... I don't know, connected. Like he'd been living in a dream his whole life, and was just getting dropped into reality. Or maybe living in a nightmare, and then waking up from it. I used to overhear my parents talking, and my mom was convinced that he must've been abused or raped or something, he was such a.... how'd she put it? 'Damaged child'."
"Damaged."
"Damaged, yeah. So anyway, this one time I was walking from the bus stop to home, and I saw it happening across the street. Pietro had these two kids following him, and somehow I knew that if he had wanted to, he could have run away. But he didn't. They caught up to him and threw him down, and they were trying to take his backpack. I got really angry, especially since these kids were like twice his size and he didn't stand a chance.
Now, I was kinda big for my age, so I went stomping across the street like a bat out of hell, and I came right up to him and said something like, uh, I can't remember. It was like, "hey, knock it off, you jerks!", or something lame like that. Whatever it was, it worked, or at least the sight of me pounding my fist into my palm worked."
"Talk about motivation."
"Ha! Motivation. So these guys go running off, and I bend down to help Pietro up, 'cause he's just sitting there covering his head so they can't hit his face. On his feet, though, I saw that he was as tall as me, way taller than I thought he was, and I realized he could have taken those guys out if he'd wanted to. I said, "hey, man, what gives? You could've trashed those suckers!" And he just said, "I could've, but you did"."
"Sounds like the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
"Whatever! It was crazy. The second I let him at me, he just attached himself to me like a needy remora. The weird thing was, I was liking him back, as a friend, and pretty soon we were doing everything together. We started getting competitive, and it was all great. A really fun friendship, if I've ever been in one."
"So what happened? And this is great and all, but how'd all that 'looking for a brother' stuff get under your skin?"
"Yeah. That."
Evan suddenly grew quiet, and upon looking closer Scott could see tears building in his eyes that he was doing his best to furiously hold in. His hands were shaking, and he clenched them in fists.
"So this one time, he was fifteen, I was thirteen, we were hanging out. He was gonna spend the night at my house. We stayed up late watching movies, all that shit. We watched this one movie, uh, 'The Deer Hunter'. I hated it, man. Really boring brotherly bonding crap. Didn't give it a second thought. We both went to sleep, and I remember I had this really horrible nightmare where Pietro shot himself in the head and I was trying to hold in his brains with my bare hands. I woke up and my hands were all sticky, but it was just sweat.
So I, uh, I start looking around for Pietro, you know, 'cause I'm all nervous and stuff. He's not there. I ran all over the house looking for him, and then I saw that the front door was open, and I really freaked. I ran out into the street, and it was like, three o'clock in the morning, and somehow I knew exactly where he'd be and I ran straight to the nearest overpass."
"Was he there?" Scott said in a soft voice, probing Evan gently as the younger boy suddenly broke off and bit his knuckles against a choking sob.
"Yes. He was there. He was standing on the railing looking out on the highway, watching all the semi trucks go past underneath him. Just wearing a hooded sweatshirt and his jeans, and his bare feet looked really cold and dead walking on the metal railing, and his hands were clutching the nearest lamppost. I almost had a heart attack, man, seeing him walking up there.
I called his name real quietly, and I don't think he heard me. I tried again, and that time he looked right at me with these wild, desperate eyes. There were... there were tears on his face and he looked like he couldn't believe that I was there. I'll never forget what he said to me. He said... he said... 'you came looking for me'. Like nobody had ever come looking for him before. And I said, 'yeah, man, you're like my brother'. And he hopped off that railing, slumped against it, and started to cry.
We went home together, arms around each others' shoulders, all friends and crap. But the next day, he was different. Like he didn't want to let anyone close to him, ever. He started pushing me away, and I got mad, and as they say, the rest is history."
"Evan..." Scott started, then stopped, then started again. "Evan, I'm sorry."
"Yeah, well, it's not you fault he's such an ungrateful bastard."
The team leader was at a remarkable loss for words. He bit his lip, he stared at the floor, he made to pat Evan's shoulder and thought better of it, stuffing his hands back in his pockets.
"I always wondered..." Evan said. "I always wondered what he must've been thinking up there, all alone, before I came. I thought I'd never ever find out. But you know that one song, that one that's like, 'it's a damn cold night', kinda thing?"
"Yeah, I know it."
"I think that's what it must have been like."
There was a long moment of silence.
"I feel sorry for him." Scott said at last.
"Yeah..." said Evan hoarsely. "I always did, too."
~
I'm standing on a bridge
I'm waiting in the dark
I thought that you'd be here by now
There's nothing but the rain
No footsteps on the ground
I'm listening but there's no sound
Isn't anyone trying to find me?
Won't someone come take me home?
It's a damn cold night
Tryin' to figure out this life
Won't you take me by the hand
Take me somewhere new
I don't know who you are
But I... I'm with you
I'm with you
I'm looking for a place
I'm searching for a face
Is anybody here I know?
'Cause nothing's going right
And everything's a mess
And no one likes to be alone
Isn't anyone trying to find me?
Won't someone come take me home?
It's a damn cold night
Tryin' to figure out this life
Won't you take me by the hand
Take me somewhere new
I don't know who you are
But I... I'm with you
I'm with you
Oh why is everything so confusing?
Maybe I'm just out of my mind...
~
The thoughtful silence was interrupted by the sound of the front doorbell ringing, and Scott gave an Evan an apologetic smile.
"I better answer that."
Calling into the kitchen, "I've got it!", he trotted through the hall and to the massive entryway. Jean had been on the way down to answer it as well, and she froze on the stairs, poised like a queen. Scott felt the urge to run to the foot of the steps and start yelling, "STELLAAAAA!", but he silenced it and instead grasped the huge door handle.
"I wonder who it is," said Jean behind him, and he shrugged, opening it.
His jaw dropped to the floor.
A boy about a year older than himself stood there, his flaming orange hair spiked wildly around his head, wearing casual clothes but undeniably familiar. And next to him...
A powerful-looking man, a king by his bearings, with noble, sad eyes and a head of thick white hair. He gazed at Scott levelly and spoke in a deep, sorrowful voice.
"Where is my son?"
~